Since the early 2000s, sociologists of youth have been engaged in a debate concerning the relevance of ‘subculture’ as a theoretical framework in the light of more recent postmodern-influenced interpretations of youth identities as fluid, dynamic and reflexively constructed. Utilizing ethnographic data collected on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, this article considers such debates in relation to social network sites such as MySpace and Facebook. Although online identity expression has been interpreted as exhibiting subcultural qualities, preliminary empirical research informing this article lends itself to a more neo-tribal reading.
Adorno T. and Horkheimer M. ( 1969) The Dialectic of Enlightenment. London : Allen Lane.
2.
Arrington M. ( 2008) Facebook Isn’t a Social Network. And Stop Trying to Make New Friends There. Techcrunch.com . Available at: http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/15/facebook-isnt-a-social-network-and-dont-try-to-make-new-friends-there/
3.
Barthes R. ( 1977) The third meaning. In: Heath S (ed.) Image, Music, Text. London: Fontana.
4.
Bassett C. ( 1997) Virtually gendered: Life in an online world. In: Gelder K and Thornton S (eds) The Subcultures Reader. London: Routledge.
5.
Bauman Z. ( 1996) From pilgrim to tourist - or a short history of identity . In: Hall S and Du Gay P (eds) Questions of Cultural Identity . London: Sage.
6.
Bauman Z. ( 2004) Identity. Cambridge: Polity.
7.
Becker HS ( 1963) Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: Free Press.
8.
Bennett A. ( 1999) Subcultures or neo-tribes? Rethinking the relationship between youth, style and musical taste. Sociology33(3): 599-617.
9.
Bennett A. ( 2000) Popular Music and Youth Culture: Music, Identity and Place . London: Macmillan.
10.
Bennett A. ( 2004) Virtual subculture? Youth, identity and the internet. In: Bennett A and Kahn-Harris K (eds) After Subculture: Critical Studies in Contemporary Youth Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
11.
Bennett A. ( 2005) Culture and Everyday Life. London: Sage.
12.
Bowker GC ( 2007) The past and the internet. In: Karaganis J (ed.) Structures of Participation in Digital Culture. Columbia, OH: Columbia University Press.
13.
boyd d (2007a) Why youth (heart) social network sites: The role of networked publics in teenage social life . In: Buckingham D (ed.) Youth, Identity, and Digital Media. Chicago: MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning.
14.
boyd d (2007b) None of this is real: Identity and participation in Friendster. In: Karaganis J (ed.) Structures of Participation in Digital Culture. Columbia, OH: Columbia University Press.
15.
boyd d and Ellison N. (2007) Social network sites: Definition, history and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication13(1). Available at: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html
16.
Brake M. ( 1985) Comparative Youth Culture: The Sociology of Youth Cultures and Youth Subcultures in America, Britain and Canada. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
17.
Chaney D. (1996) Lifestyles. London: Routledge.
18.
Chaney D. ( 2004) Fragmented culture and subcultures. In: Bennett A and Kahn-Harris K (eds) After Subculture: Critical Studies in Contemporary Youth Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave .
19.
Cummings J. ( 2006) It’s more than a t-shirt: Neo-tribal sociality and linking images at Australian indie music festivals. Perfect Beat8(1): 65-84.
20.
Facebook (2010) Facebook Press Room. Available at: http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
21.
Garner R. ( 2002) Hanging Out: Community-based After-school Programs for Children. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.
22.
Hall S. and Jefferson T. ( 1976) (eds) Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-war Britain. London: Hutchinson .
23.
Healy D. ( 1997) Cyberspace and place: The internet as middle landscape on the electronic frontier. In: Porter D (ed.) Internet Culture. London: Routledge .
24.
Hebdige D. ( 1979) Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Routledge.
25.
Hitwise Australia (2008) Top Websites and Search Engine Analysis Report. Available at: http://www.hitwise.com/au/datacentre/main/dashboard-1706.html
26.
Hitwise Australia (2009) Top Websites and Search Engine Analysis Report. Available at: http://www.hitwise.com/au/datacentre/main/dashboard-1706.html
27.
Hitwise Australia (2010) Top Websites and Search Engine Analysis Report. Available at: http://www.hitwise.com/au/datacentre/main/dashboard-1706.html
28.
Hodkinson P. ( 2002) Communicating goth: Online media. In: Gelder K (ed.) The Subcultures Reader. London: Routledge.
29.
Hodkinson P. ( 2003) ‘Net.goth’: Internet communication and (sub)cultural boundaries. In: Muggleton D and Weinzierl R (eds) The Post-subcultures Reader . Oxford: Berg.
30.
Hodkinson P. ( 2004) The Goth scene and (sub)cultural substance. In: Bennett A and Kahn-Harris K (eds) After Subculture: Critical Studies in Contemporary Youth Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave .
31.
Hodkinson P. and Lincoln S. ( 2008) Online journals as virtual bedrooms? Young people, identity and personal space. Nordic Journal of Youth Research16(1): 27-46.
32.
Joinson A. ( 2008) ‘Looking at’, ‘looking up’ or ‘keeping up with’ people? Motives and uses of Facebook. Computer-Human-Interaction Conference Proceedings: 1027-36.
33.
Jones S., Millermaier S., Goya-Martinez M. and Schuler J. ( 2008) Whose space is MySpace? A content analysis of MySpace profiles. First Monday13(9). Available at: http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2202/2024
34.
Kahn R. and Kellner D. ( 2003) Internet subcultures and oppositional politics. In: Muggleton D and Weinzierl R (eds) The Post-subcultures Reader. Oxford: Berg.
35.
Levi-Strauss C. ( 1966) The Savage Mind. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
36.
Luckman S. ( 2003) Going bush and finding one’s ‘tribe’: Raving, doof and theAustralian landscape. Continuum: A Journal of Media and Cultural Studies17(3): 318-32.
37.
MacDonald D. ( 1953) A theory of mass culture. In: Rosenberg B and White D (eds) Mass Culture: The Popular Arts in America. Glencoe, IL : The Free Press.
38.
McLuhan M. ( 1962) The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
39.
Maffesoli M. ( 1996) The Time of the Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society, trans. Smith D. London: Sage.
40.
Merton RK ( 1957) Social Theory and Social Structure. London: Collier-Macmillan.
41.
Miles S. ( 2000) Youth lifestyles in a changing world. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.
42.
Muggleton D. ( 2000) Inside Subculture: The Postmodern Meaning of Style. Oxford: Berg.
43.
Papacharissi Z. ( 2009) The virtual geographies of social networks: A comparative analysis of Facebook, LinkedIn and ASmallWorld. New Media & Society11(2): 199-220.
44.
Pearson E. ( 2009) All the World Wide Web’s a stage: The performance of identity in online social networks. First Monday14(3). Available at: http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2162/2127#p6
45.
Peeters H. ( 2008) The networked self: Autofiction on MySpace. Image & Narrative8(2).
46.
Redhead S. ( 1990) The End-of-the-Century Party: Youth and Pop Towards 2000 . Manchester: Manchester University Press.
47.
Robards B. ( 2010) Randoms in my bedroom: Negotiating privacy and unsolicited contact on social network sites. PRism7(3). Available at: http://www.prismjournal.org/fileadmin/Social_media/Robards.pdf
48.
Roberts K., Pollock G., Tholen J and Tarkhnishvili L (2009) Youth leisure careers during post-communist transitions in the South Caucasus. Leisure Studies28(3): 261-77.
49.
Shildrick T. and MacDonald R. ( 2006) In defence of subculture: Young people, leisure and social divisions. Journal of Youth Studies9(2): 125-40.
50.
St John G. ( 2003) Post-rave technotribalism and the carnival of protest . In: Muggleton D and Weinzierl R (eds) The Post-subcultures Reader . Oxford: Berg.
51.
Thornton S. ( 1996) Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. London: Wesleyan University Press.
52.
Turkle S. ( 1995) Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet . New York: Touchstone.
53.
Wise P. ( 2006) Australia’s Gold Coast: A city producing itself In: Linder C (ed.) Urban Space and Cityscapes: Perspectives from Modern and Contemporary Culture. London: Routledge.
